Posted 5 years ago on June 4, 2012, 11:42 p.m. EST by Misaki
(893)
This content is user submitted and not an official statement

The feedback I got from the "Does OWS want to "punish" the rich?" thread (and from this one) was that spending money to manipulate the political process is unethical and should be punished or at least prevented, but charging high prices for items and making billions of dollars of profit is perfectly ethical and fine.

The fact that the politicians we elect to office are vulnerable to corruption (such as by creating loopholes for corporations in the state they represent, or accepting "donations" to a local school district in return for tax rules that favor corporations) is completely the fault of the 99% but that's beside the point.

Do you have any plan for how the rich COULD be using their money to help the economy? In a previous thread I argued that charity does not (significantly) raise employment because charities are not in the business of giving people jobs. Maybe the rich could "invest" in new equipment for businesses and so on, but we'd probably buy it from China and if it was spent on construction those new buildings would just end up vacant and unused due to lack of product demand.

Or should the 1% hire people to stand around and do nothing? Does anyone actually have any ideas of what the 1% should be doing with their money to help the economy in a time of dire need?

If not, then we can only blame the people who buy the overpriced products sold by corporations and oppose more government spending, higher taxes on the rich, or just a guaranteed basic income: the middle class (and stupid poor people who support things like the Tea Party).

A point of agreement.~ I would still like to wait for more responses before declaring war on that portion of the middle class which opposes doing anything about unemployment and inequality (mostly "radical Republicans").

You just said there is nothing the 1% should be doing. I thought you were serious; if you have changed your mind then please answer the question in the OP: So what are the top 1% supposed to be doing right now?

The rich need to put down their Ayn Rand books & get a conscience. I am so sick of their greed & mean-spiritedness. If I were rich I would want to use my money to help people. I think it is unpatriotic to not want to help your own people,

The 1% are supposed to continue doing exactly what they are doing. They should continue to use their bargaining power to take as much of the available income as possible and to get as wealthy as possible and to hell with everyone else. And they should also continue to lobby government to make sure nobody interferes with that process.

The point is that this situation has persisted for the last 30 years (when the 1% started gaining a greater share of income while most/all below the top 10% stagnated) because we have reached the point where a majority of the population has been placated by TV and their generous income and do not want to devote interest to the problems of the lower half of the population.

So it isn't the "99%" that need to act, because it is people within that 99% who are responsible for condoning and even advocating policies which keep unemployment and inequality high.

It would have been nice to reach consensus on the nation's problems. But the reality is that the middle and upper-middle classes are not going to "wake up" unless we threaten their ethical and economic interests.

(I remember reading the "1 in 2 of the US is in poverty or near poverty" story... near poverty sounds scary right?!)

Since 50% are in poverty or close to it, most if not all of them will be motivated to change the system. That is all you need for revolutionary change. We don't need the top 50%, although most of them would benefit from less inequality too.

People just need to be better informed that there are alternatives. They have been brainwashed their entire lives with the idea that capitalism is the only way and any alternative will lead to a totalitarian Stalin dictatorship.

I believe democracy is the solution. If we allocated income democratically, that would enable us to raise the minimum income to $115k and reduce the work week to 20 hours. That is a sales pitch that can win over a significant portion of the bottom 50%.

About half the population wants redistribution through taxes, while the other half doesn't... but jobs are the critical issue right now anyway. Which is what gives us justification for declaring (non-physical) "war" on people who oppose efficient job creation.

In order to pay every worker from $115k to $460k, the economy needs to produce $14.5 trillion in goods and services which is exactly what we produced in 2010. You can see the math here.

We don't need to create any more jobs in order to pay those incomes to the people who are currently working. But since 18% are underemployed, we obviously need to create more jobs. So the central bank will have a mandate to invest whatever amount is necessary to create enough new businesses or expand existing businesses to fully employ everyone.

We have not run out of work to do. We have houses to build, infrastructure to build, fix and maintain. There are probably millions of unfunded business ideas. There are diseases to cure, a universe to explore, an entire energy system to convert. We will never run out of work to do in our lifetime.

Some companies obviously generate more revenue per employee, some generate less. So some companies will generate more income than is needed to cover these new incomes. They will need to lower their price. Some will generate too little. They will need to raise their prices.

There are other options, this is an oversimplification. But it gives you a basic idea of how this would work in practice.

I advocate replacing capitalism with democracy. It will be a different economic system. There won't be redistribution of income through taxes. All companies will be democratically owned. They will no longer be privately owned. And all companies will be required to pay all workers according to the national pay plan.

How do you plan on declaring war and getting the changes you want (and what are those changes)?

What I want is obviously radical. But if enough people want it, like more than 35%, than we can either just vote through our changes or go on a general strike and demand the change be made.

When someone eats a meal, they do not need another meal for several hours. But it's true they will continue to need food (which requires work) for the rest of their life.

So some companies will generate more income than is needed to cover these new incomes. They will need to lower their price. Some will generate too little. They will need to raise their prices.

Since you say that managers will still need to be rewarded for their company's financial performance to prevent slacking, it does not seem likely that companies would lower their prices because the management would gain less rewards for doing so.

There are other options, this is an oversimplification.

The other option (for the system you describe) is taxation, which the majority oppose but this thread is about how the majority is harming the minority (the unemployed and poor).

How do you plan on declaring war and getting the changes you want (and what are those changes)?

That's the next thread. This is to give people a chance to make realistic suggestions about how the 1% could be helping but aren't.

than we can either just vote through our changes or go on a general strike and demand the change be made.

Our government is going to dictate how the rich can spend their money?

I think the confusion stems from falling for the myth that the rich people create all our jobs. DEMAND creates jobs. The rich are always trying to get richer by supplying what we want. They hire no one until demand DEMANDS it. Usually they'll hold out and over work their current before they HAVE TO hire new employees or LOSE the business. It CAPITALISM!!!

I hope I helped dispel some of the confusion. We need to be on the same page so we don't forget why OWS came around. Ey!

Our government is going to dictate how the rich can spend their money?

Someone posted in another thread that... "People are poor because they believed a\*holes such as you and your kind had their best interest at heart and never took it upon themselves to realize that they were slaves to you and your kind and still are, like so many others have been."*

This thread is to show that trust has nothing to do with it; the rich cannot really help the economy except by being inefficient (paying people to stand around etc.) which causes them to lose to their competitors and in the end all the "helpful" rich would no longer be rich.

Which proves that either we must use a government solution like taxes, or the risk of higher taxes causes the extreme right to agree to a solution that fixes unemployment without higher taxes.

Not all rich people have control of a corporation. Apple's shareholders would probably be overjoyed if Apple took its $100 billion in cash and used it on shareholder dividends, but shareholders do not control the company.

So imagine you're a rich person with $10 billion in wealth, but it's split between 1000 different large and small corporations and the most you own is 5% of a corporation.

You can't control where the companies whose stocks you own build their factories, and even if you wanted them to move operations to the US the other 95% of shareholders would probably oppose you since it would lower profits.

they can make the taxes and fees for outsourcing so exorbitant that operating out of the country is not profitable. with 10 billion i could buy a few of those businesses and make sure they stay in america. with 10 billion i could control some of congress and see that laws were passed to keep businesses in america. repeal the free trade act. whatever it takes to keep the money in this country

they can make the taxes and fees for outsourcing so exorbitant that operating out of the country is not profitable.

We, the entire country, can do that (and it might not even reduce unemployment enough especially if the government reduces spending; the Great Depression had trade barriers and high unemployment) but individual rich people can't.

with 10 billion i could buy a few of those businesses and make sure they stay in america.

Well, someone with 10 billion could also just have them switch over to work conservation, creating jobs without losing much or any money. If you have an hour though, watch Born Rich by Jamie Johnson. When he mentions being a "shareholder" I realized how little power even the very rich have.

I think the main thing preventing this suggestion (otherwise it would be a good one) is if you do that, you're competing against a bunch of other businesses who do use overseas labor and can potentially sell their products for much cheaper than you can. And for those companies which do have a brand that allows them to be very profitable, that's already reflected in their share price... not to mention things like supply lines, which is the excuse (other than wage cost) that Apple gives for not making things in the US anymore like it once did.

with 10 billion i could control some of congress and see that laws were passed to keep businesses in america. repeal the free trade act.

Overestimating the effects of money in politics. For example GE is famous for making huge profits and paying a low, or even negative tax rate, but in the example in this NYT article it gave a "donation" of about $25 million to a school district in exchange for favorable tax laws.

GE has a lot more than $25 million, but it couldn't have spent $250 million and expected 10 times as much favorable legislation. And GE isn't a rich person.

So "buying up businesses and moving them to the US" might be effective, but it also sounds like a lot of work where the only purpose is to spend money... if someone makes millions per year by doing literally nothing, as some rich people do, and they don't have any experience in running a business... and furthermore if the majority of the US population votes for a president who lets you keep all of your money... I don't see how OWS's protests will convince rich people to do this. Otherwise I do think it is a good idea, the first one in this thread.

They do pay their employees reasonably well. Not nearly as much as profits (Apple had over $400,000 in profits per employee last year) but enough that lots of people want to work at those places.

but not walmart?

I think the Walton family controls Wal-mart. My point was that another rich person, say Warren Buffett, cannot singlehandedly force Congress to change laws so that Wal-mart profits go to its employees. The Walton family could choose to do that, but most rich people are not part of the Walton family and many, possibly even most corporations are controlled by a CEO and so on who don't own the company, they're just responsible for maximizing profits.

I don't believe anyone can come up with a solution to un-employment right now. The business class wants us to believe they can always innovate and create jobs but they just can't. People are wary of the government getting too involved because of these horror stories involving government workers.Then there's the green energy lobby that is self serving.
Job creation can be the result of neccessity, such as Eisenhower building the highway system for national defense, innovation such as the digital bubble of the 90's, or simply to keep people moving like FDR's construction projects.
Right now it's just stagnent. We'll have to come up with something new because the old models won't work.

Unemployment is still high, and corporate profits are at the same level as in 2007 yet fewer people think there are too many rich people in the US or that wealth should be more evenly distributed. The logical explanation is that some people think that "a bad economy" hurts the rich as well; we just need to somehow find the right arguments and combine it with a solution to convince those people to support a solution to unemployment.

The paper makes it clear that the US dollar as the world's reserve currency helps the US, even if it might harm multinational companies (although it points out that many profit from currency fluctuations).

I actually have not heard anything about changes in currency exchange rates contributing to the recession or current high unemployment. In fact, the paralysis of the Euro zone is due precisely due to the fact that with a common currency, nations cannot devalue their currency to gain a competitive wage advantage.

Also,

The Terra would provide a robust international standard of value, something that has been missing for
decades.

Anything wrong with buying inflation-adjusted US bonds if you really want to minimize risk?

What is the Euro backed by however? What are bonds backed by? What is the dollar backed by, What is the Terra backed by? If the US dollar goes into hyperinflation or massive deflation, or the Euro did, the Terra would not, or at least not nearly as easily, I suppose if all the commodity markets it was backed by went into chaos it might.

This is really more for extreme cases of currency depreciation, if the currency devalues too much, you can switch to the Terra and it will keep minimize the collapse. It builds greater resilience into the international trading system by backing money with useful material goods and services.

Not saying inflation adjusted bonds would not be a good way to minimize risk, but if hyperinflation hits, I would not want to see what happens to those bonds, whereas with the Terra, no harm no foul, its value might be impacted a bit by the downturn, but it would not be prone to extreme volatility like our national currencies can be subject to.

This is really more for extreme cases of currency depreciation, if the currency devalues too much, you can switch to the Terra and it will keep minimize the collapse.

Not sure of the specifics, but Iceland cancelled the debt its banks had. If those debts had been in Terras, Iceland would still have cancelled them.

The argument is that it reduces fluctuations in the business cycle, but it's pretty well established by now how the US, or the EU could boost growth and employment: spend more and pay for it with taxes (or inflation). The demurrage of ~4% per year might be one reason why this specific proposal has not been adopted by corporations; but again, the report points out that some corporations do profit from currency fluctuations and would have no reason to use the less profitable Terra.

I'm not the one saying we should use a different currency. Not sure what exactly you're asking what we need to pay for though. If you mean boosting growth and employment through government spending, we could pay for it with taxes if we wanted to. This is true for EU nations that have high unemployment... they COULD just raise taxes on their rich so they could spend more without taking out loans at high interest rates.

But if we want to fix unemployment without more government spending, work conservation would do it. Just a matter of finding the right argument, as it always has been...

I am also not saying we should eliminate national currencies. Different types of money facilitate different market behaviors, and promote certain behaviors over others.

I do agree, we could could pay for it by taking enough of the wealth of corporations and those who are the wealthiest. But that doesn't mean we won't end up right back where we started 20 or 30 years later when those taxes are repealed. Or when this program or that program is stupidly ended.

Not saying that the ideas you promote cannot help, they would however probably work even better when there are currencies designed to achieve many different ends in place (perhaps one would be a currency designed to promote work conservation), rather than a single type of currency that by design causes wealth to accumulate, as opposed to incentivizing that wealth to be invested in infrastructure and the sustainability of local production.

A traditional monetary system worked for most countries in the world from 1950 to 1990 or so.

All the "economic miracles", from Russia to China to Germany to Japan, and the "Four Asian Tigers" later on? They had normal currencies too. No demurrage and not based on a basket of goods, because governments can already control long-term inflation or exchange rates by changing the money supply (may conflict with unemployment but the same is true for a standardized currency).

Our current problems are because we produce things more efficiently. The monetary system doesn't have much to do with it.

Prior to the recent financial crisis, economists had become convinced they could control (eliminate) the business cycle using existing monetary policy tools.

The paper said that Terra would reduce the impact of the business cycle but either it didn't say how or I skipped over it. Would the use of Terra by corporations have prevented the housing bubble? I doubt it.

I am not implying that it is some perfect solution. It is just a different type of money, and thus can be used for things that our current money cannot be used for, or in cases where our money is not the right tool for the job. I think it would work best alongside of thousands of other types of money working in complement to the national currency system globally. Such a system would facilitate and make easier and more likely a lot of the other changes we need to enact, but which do not mesh well with our monetary paradigm.

It is applying ecological thinking to money, it needs diversity in order to provide resilience to an economy. Just remember that natural selection is not only about dominating, but working cooperatively as well. Our money dominates, it doesn't share wealth it hoards it. Not a bad behavior all the time, but a bad behavior to have everyone pressured to take up.

The ones who don't work only have the income/wealth they do because of the rising proportion of revenues going to profits instead of wages, which is due both to high unemployment over the past few decades and because those who do work for corporations/the rich are reluctant to make noise asking for more money when they already have a comfortable middle-class life.

So this isn't really a practical suggestion of what the 1% could be doing to help the economy right now (in fact, if those in the 1% stopped working it would open up job slots for other people). Meaning it is the middle class who oppose solutions to unemployment who are to blame for the current situation.

Alright, but is there anything the good rich people can be doing to help the economy despite that there are other, "bad" rich people? George Soros is a well-known example of a billionaire who supports Democratic/liberal goals but even he doesn't hire people to do nothing.

The best way to stimulate the economy is to spend money in the economy.

My problem isn't with people being rich. My problem is when people get rich from manipulating the government and taking advantage of other people.

Example: "Unlimited resources for the banks and nothing for the people. We're bailing out banks while the banks are accelerating foreclosures on millions of American homes. The Federal Reserve creates money out of nothing, gives it to the banks, banks keep it on deposit, gain interest, pays high CEO bonuses, fat cat city... all while the rest of America falls apart." Fed creates 7.7 trillion out of nothing for their own private interests, the big banks - it doesn't get any clearer than this - PLEASE WATCH - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oUpXDZFtEHw

The "Quantitative easing" on the other hand did give money to the banks (since the Fed bought financial securities and will probably not be able to sell them for the same price, taking a loss)... but that was mostly done because the federal government wasn't spending enough to fix unemployment.

Anyway THE POINT is that a single rich person cannot stop the government from giving money to the banks.

So all the "nice" rich people donate their money to the government, and for that one year the government has an extra $800 billion in revenues.

This means the remaining rich are all "not nice", and the previously "nice" rich no longer have any money to invest to earn more money so there still won't be any "nice" rich people in the future either.

It also means that "nice" rich people can't donate their money to charity but that's less important.

It means we change the system even though society has not reached an agreement that it should be changed, and a change (lower inequality) would "hurt" some of the people who don't want that change to happen.

Don't you understand? You're never going to get free shit, ever. Your masters hold out the tantalizing hope that if you support them and force the country into more and more government then you'll get your reward...you won't.

When you wander in for your free healthcare you'll be told there just isn't the money for you (and there won't be, business has been destroyed). Transplants will be a thing of the past (unless you're a political elite and if you aren't now, you won't ever be), no hip replacement for you, go home and die fuckwad and thanks for the power.

Oh, how you dream of that little 'living income', it just makes so much sense, if they give you money you'll spend it on beer and twinkies and the economy will hum then! If they had any intention of doing that they would have done it years ago. Frankly, you can go get free government money right now, SSI, Snap, unemployment and so many others, all you have to do is lie. There are people reading this right now that have lied to get government bennies.

You see how it works? They will give you the cash but you have to lie to get it, they own your ass, they can put you in prison anytime they want. If there comes a time your 'help' is no longer needed (and it will) you will be out on your ass.

Stop living in a dreamworld, the only hope for you is to take care of yourself, make your own place, own your own assets...your masters do. Giving your 'power' to government is the stupidest thing any human can do.

This is mostly because doctors will still be liable for malpractice so they will continue using "defensive medicine" and giving unnecessary care/tests. The US could easily approve more residencies so doctors could get their certification to practice in the US, but that would make the US health care system even more expensive since people would use more health care unless we use a market-based approach to controlling prices.

Frankly, you can go get free government money right now, SSI, Snap, unemployment and so many others, all you have to do is lie.

But people want jobs, and the government isn't handing those out.

End tangent. Stay on topic please. Is there anything the 1% should be doing right now that it isn't?